Sunday, 24 December 2017

I
have been reading the papers for the longest time every morning, and I realised
this morning that every page is about a life, a story, a fight, a surrender, a
choice and a promise fulfilled.

So,
the paper in your hand is an anthology of personal narratives about every
person's life for that season in time, and it is a story each of them had lived
through and is still living through as I flip the pages to the end.

It is
thus for real, that is, the tears are real, the joy is genuine, the struggle is
painful, the passing time unforgiving, and the hope is pressing.

There
is no other way of capturing these stories except to put them on paper (photo
or video), confined to a number of words depending on the narration, limited to
a column or half a page, with photos inserted to complete the personal touch.

If
you do a quick scan of The Sunday Times, for example, the front page captioned
a lawyer Josephus Tan, who is a target of online flak for defending a couple
who had tortured a vulnerable youth, Annie Ee, to death, and just below it is a
corruption scandal whereby our very own Keppel Corporation (offshore and marine
unit) was fined a record sum of US$422m for bribery. You can be sure that
executive heads are going to roll.

Then,
if you browse through the pages, you will find interesting stories like a
cleric in Malaysia censuring fans for attending a candlelight vigil for the
late Korean pop star Kim Jong Hyun.

The
cleric warned Muslims with these words: "Cannot. You are forbidden from
doing that...If it's a non-Muslim, why would we pray heaven for him instead?
What's more, he committed suicide, why would we follow the culture of
infidel?"

What
is even more interesting is a summary of the events that shook 2017, that is,
the good, the bad and the ugly under Insight.

Here
you will find the nominees of the Singaporean of the Year award leading the
charge forward to 2018.

These
fighters have a full plethora of struggles and victories to tell with laudable
depth from cartoonist Sonny Liew who beat the odds to win three Will Eisner
awards for his book "The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye to a lawyer Satwant
Singh, who will be spending Christmas building his 17th school in Ratokke with
20 volunteers, and to the Para-Olympian gold medalist Jason Chee, his life is
just amazing.

One
must not forget that riding the waves of these life's champions are the
less-inspiring tales of the transport woes under Khaw Boon Wan's leadership,
the controversial and bitter-sweet taste of the recent Presidential election,
the radicalisation of our youths here, and the one event that took the cake
last June/July was the Lee Family Saga.

The
latter practically woke Parliament up with unprecedented urgency for a two-day
personal triumphalist vindication.

These
were the unforgettable words of our PM when he was asked about healing the
rift: "Perhaps one day when emotions have subsided, some movements will be
possible. These things take time."

Lesson? Indeed, these
things take time.

The
corruption, the bribery takes time. The beliefs of a lawyer on justice to and
for all, regardless of how egregious their crime as perceived by some take
time.

The
religious underpinning of the cleric's rebuke takes time. The perseverance of
the nominees for the Singaporean of the Year takes time. And the transport
woes, the radicalisation process, and the healing of the family ties all take
time.

My
point is that every story I read about in the papers on a daily basis concerns
the life of people and corporations thus far. It is the stories of their
struggles, stumbles and falls, and overcoming up to the time the press goes to
print.

In
other words, they, and for that matter, we are not done yet. Unless of course,
it involves a suicide or a death, then one can argue that his/her story has
technically ended there and then.

But
even for a termination of a life, it does not necessarily bring the story to an
end. Mind you, the stories of the many valiant deaths, and the many ignominious
ones, have regaled us, inspired us, awaken us, shocked us, relieved us, and
empowered us.

Even
in death, some legacies survive and pulsate in the continuum line of past and
future histories, and others have left us scratching our heads wondering:
"What just happened?"

Death
therefore does not put an end to a life's story. It just creates more stories
about it as lives in the living years ride on the lessons learnt in that life
that went before it to cause an enduring inflection point in their own life's
trajectory.

You
can say that a life in living and in dying is always sending ripples of changes
across his/her own circle of influence, which may be within close-knit
relationships or on a global scale, and they are never forgotten because these
ripple effects often cause a chain-reaction of forward-moving transformation.

This
Christmas, one of the oldest stories I know has and is still sending ripples in
the course of time, that is, past, present, and I believe, in the future. It is
the ageless story of a man who gave up all for all.

At
the lowest point in Calvary, there is nothing supernatural about his sacrifice.
It is the most uneventful in fact. He died together with common thieves. You
can't get any more pedestrian than that.

Jesus
is many things to me, that is, a miracle worker, the great sage, the weather
changer, and the death defeater. But what moves me most about his life story is
not the supernatural, but the natural.

He
defeated all odds, overcame life's obstacles and completed the race not with
supernatural powers, that is, by wondrously bending time and warping space. On
the contrary, he overcame all with the most natural, that is, a surrendered
heart, an obedient will, and a crucified flesh.

When
it matters most for him to dispense his supernatural powers to create a ripple
effect of wows! and awe!, Jesus chose instead the bitter cup
of obedience, forgiveness and love at Calvary to make the enduring difference.

It is
therefore the ordinary Christ that moved me most, and most intimately, because
it is his ordinariness that I can relate to most deeply when I face my own
trials in life.

Let
me end with the words of a great late historian, Will Durant, who had won many
awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and spent 50 years writing
the eleven-volume series, The Story of Civilisation.

In
his end-of-his-life book entitled "Fallen
Leaves", he concluded one of the chapters "Our Gods" with this pervading sentiment:-

"If
I could live another life, endowed with my present mind and mood, I would not
write history or philosophy, but would devote myself to establishing an
association of men and women free to have any tolerant theology or no theology
at all, but pledge to follow as far as possible the ethics of Christ, including
chastity before marriage, fidelity within it, extensive charity, and peaceful
opposition to any but the most clearly defensive war. I can imagine what fun
the wits of the world could have with this paragraph, and I know how unpopular
and precarious my proposed fellowship of semi-saints would be; but I would
rather contribute a microscopic mite to improving the conduct of men and
statesmen than write the one hundred best books."

That is in fact the timeless story of the Ordinary Christ, the Lover of my Soul.

In collaboration with Centre for
Fathering, I’ve crafted this heartfelt note below to my daughter, and to share
with everyone my experiences and feelings as I watch her grow up with every
step we take together.

Hopefully, this will inspire and
encourage all you fathers reading this to find your own special ways to bond with your child in the coming new year.

"My dear, you hold a special place in my
heart. It is a place reserved just for you, and Daddy will protect it with his
life for the rest of his life.

Daddy also wants you to know that it is not
going to be a neat place because his heart is fragile at times. It has
cracks from the mistakes he had collected over the years before you came into
his life.

But since you came, you changed all that.

You see, every step Daddy takes with you in
every journey of life, from your first step to your uncharted runs, from your
first day in school to the year's end, and from your first tear to the drying
of your last, Daddy's heart grows with yours from strength to strength.

Now, as the new year unfolds, Daddy wants to
start every day right with you. He wants to walk with you to school. He wants
to know you more. He wants to go the distance, feel assured in the silence, and
learn with you along the way.

My girl, this will be more than just a
father-daughter time we share. It will be a defining bond built over the years.
And this bond will endure beyond your school and graduation.

In fact, it will be a walk for life, a journey
with your heart in mine. And one day, this walk will lead to Daddy walking with
you down the aisle before he gives you away.

But Daddy knows that it will not be the end of
our journey. It will just be the beginning of another. By then, you will have
your own family, and you will walk your own children to school.

And when you do, you will remember our walk
together. You will remember our special bond as you build yours with your
children. And this bond will always have a special place in Daddy's heart as
your children will have in yours.

Sunday, 17 December 2017

They say God is in church
today, but where is he? Where is the God who is supposedly everywhere?

Where is God when prayers
fall on deaf ears? Where is God when a wife and her child are abandoned by her
husband? Where is he when a devotee is dying and a believer is being persecuted for his faith? Where is he when we need him most?

If he is there, then where?

Is he in the routine smile
of an usher who loosely shakes your hand? Is he in the church worship team who
performs to great fanfare? Is he in the lyrics of a song, the message of a
sermon, or the communion elements we partake?

And if the gathering of
saints in church moves the heart of God, then where is the part where this
divine effect also moves the heart of man?

For isn't it undeniable
that many come to church to seek many goals that have little, if not, nothing
to do with personal redemption?

Some come to seek
attention, to bedazzle with their gift. Some come to seek relief from guilt so that
they may return to their old man for the rest of the week. Some even come to
reinforce and reaffirm their own righteousness to give the impression that they
are above the rest.

Still others come for the
social mass effect to gossip, spread discord and entrench toxic views and
position. And lastly, there is one group that comes with no agenda, no string
attached, no commitment.

In other words, they are
the inertia within the inertia. They are like the dry paint in the church;
clearly visible but seldom moved.

Truly, the church is a
complicated place, where the weekly convergence of saints requires the
surrender of one's will for a transformation of one's life. But most times, it is the
resistance of one's will against the gentle invitation towards enduring change.

Where then is God in all
this?

Where is he when pride,
self-righteousness, envy and lust corrupt the heart and rob the redemptive path
of a fallen soul? Where is God when hypocrisy reigns and faithlessness
persists?

Are there more prodigal
sons in church still demanding their inheritance in advance so that they may
live their life on their own terms?

Or, are there many others
in church who follow the path of the elder brother who live seemingly
impeccable lives and are intolerant of the sins in others but blindsided by the
sins in themselves?

Alas, if this is what one
can generally expect in a church, then I think I am home. I think I fit in, snugly.

This is a place I can truly
identify with. I am therefore with people I can relate to. For I have embodied all that I have written about, if not more (or worse).

I get lost in my pride,
misled by my greed, derailed by my hypocrisy and am indulgent in my own comfort
zone.

I have taken the same
route the prodigal son had taken and wandered even further into the thorny path
of envy and self-righteousness that the elder son had ever wandered.

It is therefore comforting
to know that I am at home in church where I am not expected to be hung up as
perfect museum pieces for others to marvel at and bid for only to find on
closer scrutiny how imperfect I am.

But on the contrary, in a
church, I am with broken people, sometimes still lost, sometimes still struggling,
and sometimes still resisting the disciplines of the Spirit.

And where is God in all
this? Where is he in all my imperfections, flaws and the strewn broken pieces?
Where is God when I fall, cry for help and wander in my own wilderness?

Well, I believe he is
there, where I am, at a place he has been before, and taking the same road of
grief he once walked.

As
Christ bore the Cross on a bloody trail to the Calvary of self-death, that is,
the perfect for the imperfect, I am taking my own journey to that same place of
my own demise.

But
for me, the road to self-denial is never easy. With every step I take, the
broad road calls out to me. Its plans to derail me sometimes overcomes my spirit and plunges me into a time of deep reflection and soul-searching.

As
Christ confronted divine helplessness for a purpose and for a season, I believe
I too have to confront mine for a purpose and for a season no less.

At
most times, I know it is not going to be a readily accessible answer. But it
will at least be one I know my Savior had taken before me, and overcome.

As
such, maybe my belief are made of better things, that is, stronger and tougher.

Surely, it is not made of
material that bends and breaks. Neither is it made of defences that yield when threatened and tested.

Instead, I'd like to believe that they are made of the same material that once carried
my Saviour through. And they are the material that defy the elements of this
world. They are in fact beyond what this world can ever comprehend, contain or
contrive.

And
I suspect this material is comprised of love, faith and hope, and the
toughest of them is still love, that is, a love that will carry me through. Cheerz.

Sunday, 10 December 2017

In this
world, there are some fools living amongst us. On both sides of the theist/atheist
divide, they reside foolhardy. For
now, I have two fools in mind here.

The first
fool is the fool who says in his heart “this
is no god”. His faith is on
reason and reason alone. For him, reason is the alpha and omega of all things. He
feverishly digs the existential foxhole with his bare hands of reason to the
exclusion of everything else. He refuses to explore the values of myths,
wonders and marvels of religious tradition past and present as revealing the
essence of our nature, our hopes and our yearnings. He refuses to see
beyond reason to the heart of humanity, one which seeks far more than what
reason can ever hope to offer.

He is the
one who shouts out at the self-glorifying summit of science to proclaim to the
world that the basis and means of all discoveries to the origin and meaning of
life is reason and reason alone. Nothing else explains it better, or more
credibly or convincingly. No reality exists apart from what reason can unearth.
The unseen is therefore the figment of one’s febrile imagination while all that
is seen is by virtue of reason’s exploits. There
are just no fairies in the bottom of the garden.

While the
late notorious atheist-turned-theist Professor Antony Flew proclaimed, “I am open to omnipotence,” this first
group of fools nevertheless choose to remain open only to reason and reason
only.

And while Professor
Flew declared this: “In short, my discovery of the Divine has been a pilgrimage
of reason and not of faith,” this same group denounces that statement as
misguided reason disguised as mindless faith.

So, for
this reason, religion for them is neither the cradle of civilization nor her
nurturer. Instead, she is the orphan child waiting in vain for adoption as potential
adoptive parents walk on by convinced that there is nothing of value for them
to stop and consider.

Alas, this
group takes self-ignorance to a whole new level of daily application and
servings. To them, religion, philosophy and art are all dead. Their incarnation
in whatever institutionalized and aesthetic forms over the ages only serve to
perpetuate the illusion, and dead they have always been.

To them,
ethics is a mental calisthenics of personal preferences and choices; just so
long as no harm is done to others (as for harm to oneself…this personal advice
reign supreme: “Bugger off, my house, my
rules”).

There is, I
suspect, more than personal hubris in this class of halfwits. Their ceaseless
inspiration comes from something far deeper than the arrogance they unabashedly
project to one and all.

Maybe, if
one had paid more attention, one would have noticed that the force of their
mull-headedness is betrayed by that chilling tingle in their spine, that familiar
quivering in their lips, and that tics-like
squinting in their eyes as they confront their own mortality. And it is the
indignant resistance to the possibility that they may be wrong, and for that
matter, dead wrong, that ironically breathes more fire into the bowels of their
endless rebellion. Go figure…

Let’s just
hope that at some point in their life, they will take the time to wander out of
their own inscrutable fortress of self-smugness to discover that there has
always been a much larger picture to the world they operate in and the universe
they quietly marvel at.

And to have
but a glimpse of that whole picture, or eternity uncovered, so as to be deeply
enlightened and forever transformed by the beauty beyond reason, one is
required to courageously venture beyond the boundaries of science and into the
realm of faith and hope.

For isn't
that why we are called homo sapiens,
the "wise human" – and not
homo ignoramus?

Let go for
the second group…

The second group
representing the other side of idiocy is the fool who claims that faith and
faith alone defines the world and universe. To some extent, they are on the
right track.

However, even
when they are on the right track, believing that our existential uniqueness
goes beyond reason and into the realm of faith and hope, they are still fools
no less. Why?

Because they are right for the wrong
reasons. And because the
fool in them makes sure that they conduct themselves in a way that only a fool
would conduct themselves.

This group
is usually the self-defining religious purveyors of the faith, that is, pulpit
firebrands and prosperity preachers hankering after fame, fortune and adoration
on a worldwide scale.

The
hallmark of this peculiar group of nincompoops is again arrogance and
obstinacy. This is ironically the common bond shared between the first and the
second fools here. Two sides of the same
coin - so to speak. And ignorance and obstinacy are their trademark which,
when unraveled, is nothing more than self-conceited knowledge.

For what
could be more foolish than to know that you are right (that is, subscribing to
faith and hope as an inseparable part of reality) and then go about screwing
that up by rubbishing reason altogether and ignoring good counsel and appeal of
common sense?

It is not
hard to identify someone who epitomizes that kind of wrongness in his trekking
to be right. We have the religious stage-performers who strut their controversial messages every Sunday to a mindless
chorus of mass adulation.

They no
doubt believe the original Redeemer and even got their theology correct at
first instance. But then, along the way, the right and narrow road gets a
little too familiar to them, and they couldn’t resist the temptation to spruce
things up just that tad bit to make what is already original even more original
(so to speak) only to wow the sight-and-wonders crowd.

They are
what Galatians 3:3 would classify as the foolishness of beginning in the Spirit
and then finishing by means of the flesh, human effort and human understanding.

Here are
some examples as a sour foretaste of this second class of inanity.

They turn
bloody Calvary into a self-glamorizing carnival, make the nailing to self less about their Savior and more about themselves,
and steal the limelight from under the Redeemer’s nose by showcasing their scriptural
creativity (if not shameless audacity) over the pulpit under the veneer of charisma,
originality, and popularity. It is more about the twisting of the word than the
expounding of it.

Worse
still, they gradually, and even unknowingly, claim full ownership of sanctified
materials in the Book authored by their Redeemer through self-serving
alterations which I’d call ala carte
religiosity. The obvious may be staring at them in their faces, but they will
never be the first to wink. Somehow, stubbornness is the prize of such
self-serving religiosity.

To them, nothing
in theology is unanswerable - the answers however come in neat, pre-canned, and
well-packaged answers in either 5 simple, easy-to-follow steps or 12
cut-and-dry lessons. They have effectively embodied the mind of their creator,
and even boast to become one themselves.

If knowing
the truth sets them free, then this particular class of simpletons is indeed
set free, but free only to do what they wilt and doing what they wilt is, to
them, the whole of the law, that is, a law unto thyself as a self-referential
measure.

And what about the so-called fruits
of their delusion?

Well, it
comes in various forms: Belief without
repentance, love without discipline, faith without works, earthly hope without eternal
perspective, material success without sacrifice, and prosperity without bearing
one’s cross or counting the cost.

Alas, I will
leave this class of fool to their own devices and hopefully, with enough
idiocy, imbecility and inanity sloshing around and colliding at breakneck speed
in the self-centered universe of their own making, they might just come to
their senses and, who knows, make a
decisive switch to being right for the right reasons this time…and thereafter return
to the narrow road they first started with, that is, the way, will and walk of
the faith emboldened by reason, and not relying on human effort and the works
of the flesh. Cheerz.